Knowledge management and modern learning have a common ground: interact, exchange and collaborate to learn and advance. To do so, one has to have a supportive network and the ability to formulate one’s aims, ideas and thoughts. Which may not be the case for everybody. You may not have a network (yet), collaborative work is not a part of your organization’s culture (yet), or you are just shy and don’t dare to contribute (yet).

Working Out Loud (WOL) is an approach (or a whole movement) that helps you to build trustful relationships and thereby a network supporting you in reaching a personal aim. It teaches you how to reach out and engage with people, to build up trust, to get and give (from recognition to sharing actual work), to empower yourself and others, and to contribute to establish a collaborative culture.

I never did WOL before, but now I take the chance of the #cl2025, the Corporate Learning 2025 MOOCathon of the Corporate Learning Alliance, to experience it myself. Our small learning group of 5 will meet once per week (virtually, maybe personally) for one hour for a total of 12 weeks and thereby follow the Circle Guides. This should step-by-step lead us to a new habit that includes outreach, engagement, strengthening of relationships and, of course, reaching a goal by peer-support.

I am very curious and looking forward trying this (for me) new approach of learning and collaboration in the digital age. As I do personal knowledge management (PKM) for quiet a while now, which seems to partly overlap with WOL, I am wondering about the similarities and differences of the two. And last but not least I am wondering how such an approach could be applied to supporting network building within an organization. I definitively will tell you!

Picture taken from : https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUMZNisUAAABgDd.jpg